If you’ve ever been in a development experience, felt inspired, and then struggled to apply that learning 48 hours later, you’ve experienced the ‘knowing-doing gap.’ At Adeption, we wanted to understand why some leaders successfully close this gap while others don’t – and how we could provide the right support at the right moment to help them overcome it.
The evidence for precision in action planning.
We analyzed over 1,5OO leader actions in a recent Adeption Insights Series report and the results were clear: the way a leader frames an action today determines their likelihood to implement it and learn from it tomorrow. Leaders who include specific timeframes and clear ‘whys’ in their action planning on the Adeption platform are up to 2.4x more likely to return and reflect on their progress.
This matters because the ‘Be Better’ stage of our methodology – where action meets reflection – is pivotal in the growth cycle. In fact, research indicates that just 15 minutes of daily reflection can increase productivity by up to 23%.*
Supporting leaders in the flow of work.
High-quality actions are often difficult to craft when you’re busy, which is where the knowing-doing gap can widen. We developed Aiva Assist to bridge this gap, directly within workouts on the Adeption platform – acting as a real-time ‘circuit breaker’ in digital conversations. It’s there to prompt leaders to do what they instinctively know they should, but might otherwise skip in the heat of a busy day.
By providing AI-powered nudges when an action plan lacks detail, Aiva Assist ensures that every leader starts their on-the-job experiment with the best possible chance of success. It asks the questions a coach would ask: “Why is this important to you?”, “What does success look like?”, or “When exactly will you try this?”. This allows technology to handle the real-time, tactical prompting, freeing human coaches to focus on deeper, more strategic, and more impactful conversations.
Further Reading
The ‘knowing-doing gap’: Is the disconnect between holding knowledge and executing the actions required to achieve a result. This psychological friction exists because our analytical, ‘knowing’ mind (the slow system) is often bypassed by our instinctive, habitual ‘doing’ mind (the fast system), which controls over 8O% of our behavior. Bridging this gap in leadership development means shifting from passive to experiential learning. By prioritizing consistent action and reflection, leaders can ‘train’ their instinctive brain to align with their intentions. Access the Adeption tool ‘The Knowing Doing Gap‘ for more information.
Adeption Insights Series Report: Strengthening the Action-Reflection link for leadership growth. Download here.
Adeption’s Be Conscious, Be Curious, Be Better (B3)® methodology: Empowers leaders with a simple and repeatable framework to focus development on their current context, access new approaches and ways of thinking to navigate goals and challenges, and continuously get better through deliberate practice and reflection. Learn more here.
*Source: Learning by Thinking: How Reflection Can Spur Progress Along the Learning Curve